YouTube lends Canadian cops assist

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"This is the first time Hamilton police have utilized video Web posting in an investigation and, to the best of its knowledge, the first time that law enforcement has ever used it as a direct investigative tool," Hamilton police Staff Sgt. Jorge Lasso said at a news conference following the arrest of George Gallo, 24, a suspect in a fatal Hamilton stabbing on Nov. 17.

Lasso said police officers combed through hours of video surveillance footage from the Club 77 hip-hop nightclub before two weeks ago uploading to the video-sharing site a one-minute, 12-second clip featuring "persons of interest."

After media attention surrounding about 30,000 streams of the nightclub footage on YouTube, Gallo surrendered to the Hamilton police Thursday morning, accompanied by a lawyer.

"There is little doubt that the extra media generated by the use of YouTube contributed to the fact that this man turned himself in," Lasso said.